Fabricated Rapes

Lake County, CA

Balu & Loftus

July 1996

Arvind Balu and Brendan Loftus were convicted of raping a
teenager. Balu was a UC Berkeley student. The “victim” did not tell anyone
about the alleged crime until nine months after her trip to the Konocti
Harbor Resort where she said it had occurred. She then gave implausible and
inconsistent accounts of the assault. She said that Balu had cut her and
drank her blood. After the victim's account was reported to authorities
against her will, she immediately destroyed pages of her diary relating to
her trip to the resort. Loftus was sentenced to five years in prison but
was completely cleared of the charges within two years. Balu served 8 years
in prison, three of them in solitary confinement, before he was cleared. (DP
Focus) (People v.
Balu) [2/09]

San Diego County, CA

Kevin Baruxes

Nov 29, 1994

Cortni Mahaffy accused three men of raping her, including
18-year-old Kevin Baruxes. She said that Baruxes, a skinhead, had shared
his views about race with her. “He told me that he liked me as a person,
but when the race war came, he would have to kill me” because, as a
Sicilian, she was not “pure white.” Baruxes was convicted of rape, and
because of the racist element, he was given an aggravated sentence for
committing a “hate crime.”

Mahaffy's ex-fiancée, Mike Chaney, wrote an email to the DA's
office saying he thought Mahaffy had helped to falsely convict Baruxes. It
is unclear whether a rape ever took place. Baruxes received a court finding
of factual innocence after many witnesses came forward to emphasize that
Mahaffy was a habitual liar and after Mahaffy recanted. Baruxes was awarded
$265,000 ($100/day) for wrongful imprisonment. [4/07]

Santa Clara County, CA

Auguste & Hendricks

Nov 2, 1997

Damon Auguste and Kamani Hendricks were convicted of raping
and sodomizing a 15-year-old girl identified only as Monique. Evidence
indicated the two had had sex with her, but the defendants said it was
consensual and she told them she was 17. Auguste was sentenced to 18
years in prison. Hendricks, who had prior convictions for domestic abuse and
discharging a firearm, was sentenced to 37 years.

A subsequent defense investigation revealed that Monique had
lied to the jury about her experience with alcohol, about the impact the
assault had on her social life, about having to take off two months from
work after the assault, and about her workplace making special
accommodations because of the psychological impact of the assault. The
investigation located three witnesses who said Monique admitted to them she
falsified the sexual assault charges. One of them, Stephen Smith, testified
Monique fabricated the charges because she had stayed out past her curfew
and had previously been kicked out of her parents' house for getting into
trouble.

On appeal in 2004, a judge overturned the defendants'
convictions finding that Deputy DA Benjamin Field had improperly withheld
exculpatory evidence when he failed to turn over his DNA notes. The judge
noted that Field had overstated other evidence, referring to the girl's
underwear as “blood-soaked” when blood was not even visible. Most
importantly, the judge concluded that Monique had repeatedly lied to the
jury – and that these lies offered strong reason to doubt her accusation of
Auguste and Hendricks. Charges against the two were dropped in
exchange for plea agreements to having sex with a minor. (Mercury
News) (Denver
BJ) (Prosecutor
Misconduct) [9/08]

Harris County, GA

Russell Burton

Arrested 1985

Russell R. Burton was convicted in a rural Georgia court of
raping three teen-age girls and sodomizing two of them. In Jan. 2002,
the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the reversal of his conviction
by a federal district court on the grounds of incompetent defense counsel
and unfair prosecution. The girls originally described their assailant
as having a deeply pockmarked face, stocky build, brown eyes, and brownish
hair. Burton is 6 feet tall and slim, with blue eyes, blond hair, and
clear skin. Near the time of the assault, he did have a severe case of
poison ivy, which infected his face, and this fact may have led to a
“pockmarked” description. The victims identified Burton in a photo
lineup and said their attacker drove a white Toyota, a car that Burton
owned.

Medical exams were not performed on two of the girls because
they had taken showers immediately after returning home following the
alleged assault. The third victim was examined and the medical report
stated she showed “no evidence of recent sexual entry.” This report
was suppressed at trial. One of the victims' high school teachers
stated to a private investigator that the three victims were notorious
liars. She refused to testify for fear of being socially ostracized.

A defense investigator re-enacted the crime and reported that
it was impossible to drive the distance to the alleged rape scene in the
time period during which the victims allege they were driven and also
systematically raped and sodomized. Two days before the attack, Burton had
eight genital warts surgically removed. The surgeon testified that
after undergoing this procedure “sex would have been the last thing on his
[Burton's] mind.” Burton's conviction was overturned in in May 2002. Rather than face retrial, he agreed in Dec. 2003 to a plea deal for which he
received a time served sentence. (Case
Facts) (CM)

Cook County, IL

Gary Dotson

July 9, 1977 (Homewood)

Sixteen-year-old Cathleen Crowell feared she had become
pregnant after having consensual sex with her boyfriend and made a rape
allegation as a plausible explanation to tell her parents. It had not
occurred to her that police would pursue her case. Police made her
make a composite sketch, and Crowell says they pressured her to pick Gary
Dotson from a mug book, pointing out how much he resembled the sketch. Dotson was arrested even though he then had a mustache that he could not
have grown in the five days since the alleged incident.

At trial in July 1979, Crowell identified Dotson as her
assailant. The state's forensic analyst, Timothy Dixon, also testified
that tests on the semen sample recovered from Crowell showed the alleged
assailant had a “B” blood type which was shared by only 11% of the
population including Dotson. This testimony was false and misleading
because Dixon did not volunteer that Crowell also had a “B” blood type and
her fluids mixed in with the sample. Thus the sample would have tested
positive for the “B” blood type regardless of the blood type of the semen
donor. Dotson had four of his friends give alibi testimony, but the
prosecutor branded them as “liars.” Dotson was convicted.

Crowell subsequently married and moved to New Hampshire where
she became a born-again Christian. In early 1985, she told her pastor
that she was riddled with guilt because she had sent an innocent man to
prison. On her behalf, the pastor contacted a Wisconsin lawyer who
tried to resolve the matter, but prosecutors were unresponsive. However, news about the recantation soon appeared in the Chicago Sun
Times, taking up most of the front page. Illinois Governor
Thompson said he did not believe Crowell's recantation and an appeals court
would not overturn the conviction.

The public supported Dotson and Thompson tried to assume a
middle ground by paroling him. However, Dotson's parole was revoked
two years later when his wife accused him of assault. On Christmas
Eve, 1987, Thompson granted Dotson another “last chance” parole, but it was
revoked two days later when Dotson was arrested in a barroom fight. In
1988 Dotson had DNA tests performed which exonerated him. He got his
conviction overturned on Aug. 14, 1989 and the prosecution declined to retry
him. Many later reports on DNA testing listed Dotson as the first
convicted person in the U.S. and the world to be exonerated by DNA evidence. However, priority to judicial exoneration goes to David Vasquez of Virginia
who was exonerated and released on Jan. 4, 1989. Unlike Dotson's,
Vasquez's case was little reported. (CWC)
(IP) (CBJ)
(American Justice) (TWM) [12/05]

Lake County, IL

James Montgomery

Nov 15, 1923 (Waukegan)

James Montgomery, a 26-year-old black man, was convicted in
1924 of raping Mamie Snow, a 62-year-old mentally deranged white woman. The
prosecutor, A. V. Smith, who was a member of the Klu Klux Klan, had Snow
identify Montgomery at a police station. At Montgomery's 20-minute trial,
the prosecutor concealed the fact that Snow could not recognize Montgomery
the day after she had identified him. The prosecutor also suppressed a
medical report that showed that Miss Snow was still a virgin. In 1949,
following an investigation, a writ of habeas corpus was filed. A federal
judge then declared that Montgomery's innocence was clear, as was the
prosecutor's guilt in manipulating the woman into giving false testimony
about a rape that never occurred. (Not
Guilty) (The
Innocents) (NY Times)
[11/07]

Montgomery County, MD

Giles, Giles, & Johnson

July 20, 1961

James Giles, John Giles, and Joseph Johnson Jr., all blacks,
were convicted of raping Joyce Roberts, a white teenager. They were all
sentenced to death. The prosecution withheld evidence that the victim was
highly promiscuous and that she had later falsely accused two other men of
raping her prior to the defendants' trials. The victim initially told
police that John Giles had not raped her, but later claimed that all three
defendants raped her. She apparently had a motive to lie because she was on
probation. She had not gone to the police on her own, but rather was
discovered by them. Because of the withheld evidence, the Giles brothers had
their convictions vacated, but the Maryland Court of Appeals reinstated
their convictions. On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 voted 5-4 not
to uphold the convictions. The Giles brothers were released the same year. They could not be retried because Roberts refused to testify against them
again. Governor Askew pardoned Johnson in 1968. (Maryland's
Mockingbird Case) (Giles
v. Maryland) (ISI)
[9/07]

Montgomery County, MD

Maouloud Baby

Dec 13, 2003

Maouloud Baby was convicted of raping an 18-year-old
Montgomery College student, identified as J. L. The alleged victim had
consented to intercourse with Baby, but told him that he needed to stop if
she said so. During intercourse, J. L. requested the intercourse stop
because of the pain it was causing her. However, she said he continued for
“five or so seconds” more. Baby, who was a 16-year-old high school student
at the time of the incident, said he stopped immediately. Baby was tried as
an adult. His first trial resulted in a hung jury, but he was convicted at
a retrial in 2004. At the end of Baby's retrial, the judge defined rape for
the jury as “the unlawful intercourse with another by force, or threat of
force, and without consent.” He then had the jury decide whether Baby
committed rape. On appeal in 2006, the Maryland Court of Appeals overturned
Baby's conviction on the basis that under Maryland law a man cannot be
convicted of rape once a consensual sex act has commenced. (Appeals) [9/08]

Genesee County, MI

William Hetherington

Sept 24, 1985

William J. “Wil” Hetherington was convicted of raping his
wife, Linda. Previous to the passage of a new Michigan law, a husband
could be convicted of assaulting his wife, but not raping her, as consent to
sex was viewed a part of the marriage contract. The new rape law only
applied to married couples who lived separately. A divorce court had
frozen all Hetherington's assets so he had no money to hire a lawyer or make
bond. Nevertheless, the criminal court ruled that he was not indigent and
refused to provide him with a lawyer. There was no physical evidence. A pelvic examination of Linda at a hospital three hours after the alleged
offense showed no evidence of injury or forced penetration. The
examining doctor described the lack of evidence as “very unusual.”Read More by Clicking Here

Greene County, MO

Armand Villasana

Sept 16, 1998 (Springfield)

Armand Villasana was convicted of the kidnapping and rape of
Judith Ann Lummis. Lummis, who was white, had described her assailant
as a Hispanic in his early 20s. She identified Villasana from a photo
lineup that contained five white men and himself, the only Hispanic. However, Villasana was 45 years old. Following conviction, DNA tests
produced the profile of an unknown male, results which exonerated Villasana
in 2000.

In 2005, the unknown DNA profile was matched to a prisoner in
the Ozark Correctional Center. When interviewed the prisoner said that
he was having an affair with Lummis at the time of her alleged rape, and had
sex with her the very night she reported the rape. According to the
prisoner, after Lummis's husband questioned why she was late getting home,
she made-up her kidnapping and rape story on the spur of the moment so her
husband wouldn't find out she was cheating on him.

Investigators were initially unsuccessful at locating Lummis
to confirm the story as she was on probation and had skipped reporting. However, a background check revealed that Lummis had made a nearly identical
kidnapping report in Aurora, Missouri against another man that was proven to
be false prior to his trial. After Lummis was arrested for violating
her probation, she confirmed in 2007 that her accusation against Villasana
was a hoax. Lummis cannot be prosecuted for perjury as the statute of
limitations for it had run out. (JD)
(IP) [5/08]

Summit County, OH

Nate Lewis

Oct 12, 1996

Christina Heaslet Beard accused a fellow University of Akron
student, Nathaniel “Nate” Lewis, of raping her in her dorm room. Several weeks prior to Lewis's trial, someone anonymously mailed Lewis
photocopied excerpts of Heaslet's diary. The excerpts were highly
exculpatory of Lewis. They included, “I think I pounced on Nate
because he was the last straw... I'm sick of men taking advantage of me...
and I'm sick of myself for giving in to them. I'm not a nympho like
all those guys think. I'm just not strong enough to say no to them. I'm tired of being a whore. This is where it ends.”

After Heaslet was ordered to produce the diary, the trial
judge reviewed it. The diary also indicated a financial motive for the
rape accusation: “Speaking of money, I'm suing Nate. I'm
desperate for money! My consience (sic) wouldn't allow me to do that
before, but I'm going to do whatever I have to to get out of debt.” The judge excluded the most relevant parts of the diary from being
introduced at trial. He ruled that they were barred under Ohio's rape
shield law. Faced with a conflict between, “he said the sex was
consensual,” and “she said it was rape,” the jury convicted Lewis.

On appeal, the federal Sixth Circuit Court overturned Lewis's
conviction in 2002, ruling that the trial judge improperly interfered with
Lewis's right to confront his accuser. The prosecution then dropped
charges. In 2004, a judge granted Lewis a declaration of innocence. The judge cited several factors: (1) Beard invited Lewis to her dorm
room. (2) She drank alcohol in Lewis's presence. (3) She called
her roommate to ensure she and Lewis would be alone. (4) She took a
birth control pill in front of Lewis. The judge also wrote, “...
Heaslet had several sex partners and occasionally had intercourse on first
dates, which casts doubt on her previous assertions of only engaging in
meaningful relationships.” In 2005, Lewis was awarded $662,000,
although $250,000 of it was fees for his lawyers. (Akron
Beacon Journal) (Justice:
Denied) [9/07]

Warren County, OH

Jack Frederick

Apr 23, 1994

Jack L. Frederick was convicted of rape, kidnapping, assault,
and domestic violence against Jackie Dawson, an ex-girlfriend. The lack of
physical evidence and the evidence of trial witness perjury not only creates
reasonable doubt, but also makes likely Frederick's claim that Dawson
fabricated the charges in order to retaliate against him for leaving her and
failing to share with her half of his $1200 disability check. (Justice:
Denied) [10/08]

Madison County, NY

Dan Lackey

Jan 16, 2003 (Oneida)

Dan Lackey was convicted of raping Amber Mundy. Mundy
said she was assaulted near some railroad tracks in Oneida. At this
site Mundy's footprints were visible in the snow, but those of her
assailant's were not. It was alleged that passing trains blew snow
into the assailant's footprints, but not into those of his victim. Mundy said she was assaulted with a stick, and according to her testimony,
there should have been much blood on the stick, but there was only a tiny
amount of blood on it. She also said her assailant bit her, but when a
DNA test was performed on the bite mark, the results were deemed
inconclusive because they failed to show the presence of any male DNA.

Although Mundy was not able to positively identify Lackey as
her assailant, police alleged that Lackey gave an unrecorded confession to
the crime. Three months after Lackey's conviction, Mundy reported a
similar rape in Oswego County. For this action she was convicted of
making a false report and spent 8 months in jail. A state police
investigator had informed the Oneida Police of the case just three months
after Lackey's sentencing. Lackey first learned of Mundy's false
report two years later when a defense investigator interviewed Mundy's
boyfriend.

In response to this evidence, a judge overturned Lackey's
conviction in July 2007. The judge said he was not convinced that the
alleged confession obtained from Lackey was admissible, because with a 73
IQ, Lackey may not have had the mental capacity to waive his Miranda rights. Lackey was released without bail. The D.A., however, appealed the
decision to overturn Lackey's conviction, but his appeal was unsuccessful.
(Oneida Dispatch) (Video)
[4/10]

New York County, NY

William McCaffrey

Sept 11, 2005

William McCaffrey was convicted of raping Biurny Peguero. The
rape supposedly occurred at knifepoint while McCaffrey was taking Peguero to
an after hours party in Upper Manhattan. Judge Richard Carruthers called
the alleged assault “horrific” and “disgusting” when he sentenced McCaffrey
to 20 years in prison. DNA tests in 2008 showed that bite marks on
Peguero's arm and shoulder which McCaffrey reportedly inflicted contained no
Y chromosomes, indicating they were not caused by a man. In 2009 Peguero,
who had since married and adopted the last name Gonzalez, confessed to
perjury. She said McCaffrey did not rape her and she was riven with remorse
for sending an innocent man to prison. She said her injuries stemmed from a
drunken brawl with a female friend. According to a psychiatrist who
examined her, Peguero came to believe her lie because she had been too drunk
to remember much of the night in question. McCaffrey was subsequently
exonerated and Peguero was convicted of perjury. (NY
Times) (HPost)
[4/10]

King County, WA

Clark & Schmieder

May 17, 1998 (Auburn)

Mark Clark and Jeff Schmieder were convicted of raping Regina
Birindelli. Birindelli originally claimed that three men had raped
her, but prosecutors had to drop charges against the third man after he
produced evidence that he was in jail at the time of the alleged rape. At trial, Birindelli claimed the two handcuffed her and videotaped
themselves raping her orally and anally at Clark's mobile home in Auburn. Birindelli changed parts of her story three times while testifying. The jurors were also told about the third man that Birindelli originally
claimed had also assaulted her. No handcuffs, videotape, or other
physical evidence was ever found supporting her story. Clark and
Schmieder had alibis for their whereabouts at the time of the alleged crime.
Clark even had proof that he was in traffic court in Auburn.

The two were convicted anyway, though they managed to raise
enough doubt among four jurors that they prolonged jury deliberations to
five days. One of these doubting jurors who ultimately voted guilty
said, “The one thing was that we couldn't for the life of us figure out
[was] why she would get on the stand and crucify those two guys if it wasn't
true.” That question is still a mystery although Birindelli's work as
a police informant may have something to do with the answer.

Prior to sentencing, Clark's wife, Jill, investigated the case
and found out from Birindelli's ex-boyfriend that Birindelli had been in the
Auburn, WA jail at the time of the alleged rape. Even though Clark and
Schmeider were exonerated, King County deputy prosecutor Dave Ryan refused
to acknowledge their innocence. He said that perjury charges will not
be filed against Birindelli because she might be telling the truth about
being assaulted, and just confused about the date it occurred. However
events Birindelli recounted on the days before and after her “assault” were
verified by other people, and both Clark and Schmieder have alibis for those
days. Both men spent all their money fighting the false charges and
had their mobile homes repossessed. (Justice:
Denied) [9/08]

Jefferson County, WI

Whitewater Three

Sept 5, 1998

Jarrett M. Adams and Dimitri Henley, both blacks, were
convicted by an all white jury of sexually assaulting Shawn E. Stratton, a
white female student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. A third
black, Rovaughn Hill, was also charged in the assault, but his trial ended
in a hung jury. On the day of the alleged assault, Adams, Henley, and Hill,
were playing video games in a university dormitory room with a student named
Shawn Demain, whom they had met only that day. According to Heidi Sheets,
Stratton's roommate, both she and Stratton invited the three young men to
their room four floors above.Read More by Clicking Here

England (London CC)

Roy Burnett

1985

Roy Burnett was convicted of
raping a 20-year-old student nurse. The alleged victim said Burnett
had followed her home from a bus, dragged her into the woods and threatened
her with a knife before raping her. Burnett was jailed for life and
his applications for parole were consistently denied because he refused
to admit guilt. In 1998 the same woman made another rape complaint,
but gave inconsistent accounts of being attacked by two men in a car. The complaint damaged the woman's credibility and caused police to
re-examine her previous complaint against Burnett.

A re-examination
of evidence against Burnett revealed many inconsistencies in the woman's
accounts. Scratch marks on her body, shown in photographs taken of her at
the time, were, according to fresh expert testimony, “typical of
self-inflicted injury.” A judge later added that the absence of
other injuries, which would have been expected if she had been attacked in
the way she claimed, was “surprising to the point of incredulity.” The woman's
current boyfriend, with whom she has just had a child, described her as
“attention seeking.” Burnett was released from jail after being
cleared by the Court of Appeal. Scotland Yard is considering whether
to file perjury charges against the woman. (Innocent)
[9/08]

England (Lewes CC)

David Carrington-Jones

2000

“David Carrington-Jones was wrongly convicted in December 2000 of raping
twin sisters [K.J. and L.J.] based solely on the accusation of one of the
sisters. Carrington-Jones was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. After his conviction the girl [K.J.] falsely accused her brother,
step-father, fiancée, a boyfriend and even a customer at work of rape. Carrington-Jones denied raping the girls so he was denied parole in December
2005 and again in December 2006. In August 2007 he was released on
bail while his appeal based on the new evidence that his accuser had made
multiple false rape allegations was being considered. In October 2007
his conviction was quashed as ‘demonstrably unsafe’ by the Court of Appeals,
since the new evidence undermined the credibility of the accuser. Carrington-Jones was released after 6 years and 8 months of wrongful
imprisonment.” –
FJDB
(Argus)

Australia (WA)

Kevin Ibbs

Nov 29, 1986

Kevin Ibbs was convicted of sexual assault for “raping”
Christine Watson. Watson was a close friend of Ibbs' wife, Katrina
Carter, and was living in the same house as the couple. Watson agreed
to have consensual sex with Ibbs with the full knowledge of Carter who was
in the house at the time. As Ibbs was nearing ejaculation, Watson
withdrew her consent to sex (or said she did) and tried to push Ibbs away. Ibbs, however, continued for about 30 seconds without consent.

For this non-consensual sex, Ibbs was charged and convicted of
sexual assault. He was dubbed the “30 second rapist.” Ibbs was
sentenced to four years in prison, although the sentence was later reduced
to six months. Some years later Watson admitted that the whole
incident was a setup by Carter to get Ibbs out of the house they were
sharing. Watson and Carter were subsequently convicted of conspiring
to pervert the course of justice. They served seven months in jail. (IPWA)
[12/10]